Stephen Dunn Quotes
A good many of my poems over the years have alluded to or taken on the political. Stevens has a line in one of his essays: "Reality exerts pressure on the imagination." Inevitably what is omnipresent in the culture exerts its pressure on our imaginations to respond to it, even if indirectly. But in this case the backdrop of 9/11, coincident with the breakup of a marriage, the finding of new love, some kind of personal cataclysm... all of those were forces informing the poems in some way.
Quotes to Explore
-
If al Qaeda or any other enemy of our country manages to create a situation or explode a bomb or murder or incapacitate large numbers of our people, we cannot wait for 7 weeks of a special election in order to deal with that.
-
Every employee needs to know that there's somebody out there that they serve. And when we don't let people know that for one reason or another, we're depriving them of a fulfilling job.
-
I'd heard stories about business managers who lost their client's money. My feeling was that if I made any money, I wanted to lose it myself, to be the author of my own demise.
-
Theatre, when it is at its best, takes a lot of beating - the live experience and the shared collective experience of live storytelling is really special when it is good. Particularly here in New York because the audiences are amazing, very vocal and very engaged, and that makes theatre very exciting.
-
Fitzgerald coined the phrase the 'Jazz Age,' and now we're living in the Hip-Hop Age.
-
I just use intuition - would I wear that? Would it feel okay? It's pretty simple, nothing too complicated.
-
For me, the day job comes first. That's why I call myself a diplomat who writes, not a writer who masquerades as a diplomat. If the day job demands it, I won't write at all. I write in what I call 'the crevices of my day job', and that comes only on weekends.
-
Radical Islamists spread from Western Africa through the Middle East, all the way to South Asia to sub-Indian continent.
-
I don't think Christ becomes real to us until we hit a low point in our lives and realize just how much we need Him. That's why faith affects every area of your life.
-
My father and mother were second cousins, though they did not meet till shortly before their marriage.
-
Religion is something we don't talk about, and it is used by uneducated people as a weapon to divide us as opposed to connect with each other.
-
Immortality. We all want to be remembered: We want to do things that will make people say, 'Isn't he wonderful?'
-
You don't know how to love God and your neighbor unless you look to the law to define it.
-
Our target is not negotiations, it is the end of the apartheid system. There can be no compromise about that.
-
People read more mysteries than they do political pamphlets.
-
One of the reasons I've never done intensive psychotherapy or any of that stuff is that if there's anything in me that needs fixing, I want to know that I can rely on my own intuition to fix it.
-
I consider myself more a European director who is from Iceland than an Icelandic director.
-
I'm hopeless at small talk and have a problem making eye contact.
-
What is politics? Political system is equal to development politics plus political politics.
-
To my mind the boy who gives least promise is one in whom the critical faculty develops in advance of the imagination.
-
The Negro League had some of the best players in history. Satchel Paige was probably one of the best pitchers in the history of baseball, and many believe catcher Josh Gibson was a better hitter than Babe Ruth.
-
When I left French 'Vogue,' New York welcomed me with a big, big hug.
-
We have to be capable of facing such a number.
-
A good many of my poems over the years have alluded to or taken on the political. Stevens has a line in one of his essays: "Reality exerts pressure on the imagination." Inevitably what is omnipresent in the culture exerts its pressure on our imaginations to respond to it, even if indirectly. But in this case the backdrop of 9/11, coincident with the breakup of a marriage, the finding of new love, some kind of personal cataclysm... all of those were forces informing the poems in some way.
